Last weekend’s unpleasant weather caused more problems in Delaware than we are likely to see from Hurricane Florence.

Some Delaware Bay beaches took a beating over the weekend and earlier this week from easterly winds and rough surf from a system that Delaware State Climatologist Daniel Leathers was hesitant to even call a storm.

Fencing dangled off a damaged dune and caution tape draped along some walkways over the sand in Broadkill Beach, which was built in 2015 with the spoils of dredging from the Delaware River.

But instead of discussing damage to homes and septic systems in that coastal community, Delaware’s Shoreline and Waterway Section Administrator Michael Powell said those engineered systems – including the dunes and replenished beaches along the Atlantic Ocean – are doing exactly what they were designed to do: Protect people and property.

“Instead of talking about people losing steps or impacts to septic systems, now it’s just harder to get to the beach,” he said. “That, to us, is expected. The wave impacts that would have been to septics and houses and roads have been buffered by these dunes.”

Powell said repairs will need to be made to the dune crossings in Broadkill. He said some erosion also occurred in Bowers, Pickering and Kitts Hummock.

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He said those conditions also caused some minor impacts to the front side of the dunes in Rehoboth Beach. “I didn’t see anything worse than that.”

As for flooding seen earlier this week throughout the state, that can be blamed on a seasonal king tide, or spring tide, and wet weather. None of those conditions were related to Hurricane Florence.

“There is going to be a short period of time today and tomorrow where the hurricane is approaching the coast where we’re going to see some larger than normal waves,” Powell said. “But it’s looking like 6- to 9-foot seas, which aren’t even as large as they were over the weekend. It’s really diminishing as a coastal storm threat.”

The king or spring tide increased water levels about 1.5 feet, Powell said. So the rain that fell on areas like Oak Orchard and Milford really had nowhere to go because waterways like the Indian River Bay and Mispillion River, which absorb storm runoff in those communities, were already full.

“Milford is a good example of an area where you have so much impervious surface that collects rainfall, it can only drain into the Mispillion,” he said. “If the Mispillion is higher, then you have a difficult time getting the water from the ground surface into the river.”

As for Hurricane Florence, not much is expected to change. The storm is now slamming the coast of North Carolina and northern South Carolina with damaging storm surge and harsh winds. The eye of the storm was expected to pass close to the state line between Thursday and Friday, threatening to dump more than two feet of rain in some places.

This enhanced satellite image made available by NOAA shows Hurricane Florence off the eastern coast of the United States on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018 at 5:52 p.m. EDT. (NOAA via AP)(Photo: AP)

Once the storm hits land, it is expected to linger as it turns slightly southwest, creating life-threatening conditions for those in its direct wake.

As that happens, Delaware might see a couple inches of rain and 20 mph winds with higher gusts, Leathers said. At most, areas could get 3 or 4 inches, but the National Hurricane Center predicts a likelihood of 1 to 2 inches throughout Florence’s southern journey.

For the next few days, the bleak weather in Delaware is expected to linger as the state sits under a big ridge in the jet stream, which is part of the reason Florence is staying to the south, he said.

“Under this ridge, nothing is going to be changing,” he said. There may even be sun in the forecast on Sunday.

As Hurricane Florence fizzles out, its remnants are expected to move through western Pennsylvania, which could produce additional rainfall next week.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Leathers said. “The amount of that and how long it will last is hard to say.”

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View of standing water on a corn field on Cods Road in Milford. (Photo: Jason Minto, The News Journal)

However, relatively warm, humid conditions seen now could mean some pop-up showers through Saturday that could cause minor flooding in already drenched areas that were under water earlier this week.

Swells anticipated from Florence are not expected to cause any major problems along the coast, Powell said.

“There are no impacts on the beaches so far from Hurricane Florence,” Powell said. “The large swells just showed up overnight and are not that impressive.”

With Florence, he said he expects to see waves smaller than last weekend, reaching no more than 8 feet, and does not anticipate them to cause any significant problems.

“For us to get swells from a hurricane, it has to be out in the ocean generating swells,” he said. “By [Friday afternoon] the hurricane will be so far into the Carolina coast area that it’s no longer sending swells up our way.”

Leathers said no significant changes in the gray, wet weather are expected until possibly the middle of next week.

Places that struggle with poor drainage, like Oak Orchard in Sussex County, are more likely to see flooding with any additional rain because of how wet the ground is from above-average seasonal rainfall and full waterways.

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A Colonial school district bus disregards the road closed sign and then gets stuck in high water.(Photo: John Jankowski Jr./SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)

It would be a much different story if Hurricane Florence had tracked farther north and held on to intensity, as was first projected.

“We would have seen catastrophic damage to all of our beaches: the loss of dunes and huge areas where there would be no dunes left, overwash into Del. 1 of sand from one end of the ocean coast to the other, houses damaged or destroyed in many places,” Powell said. “We were very concerned when it looked like that was possible.”

Delaware’s good fortune has become a nightmare to the south.

Despite Hurricane Florence losing wind strength and being downgraded to Category 2 in recent days, the storm surge and heavy rainfall will be devastating to the Carolinas.

Since Tuesday, the weakened system has grown wider, meaning potential flooding problems will extend further inland and tropical storm-force winds are expected to impact areas from Virginia’s southern border down to the middle of South Carolina, said Brian McNoldy, a senior research association at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.

Initial forecasts expected the storm to slam into the coast around a Category 4 strength, and although that has changed, impacts will still be devastating.

“It’s still almost a Category 3 hurricane,” he said. “It’s nothing to mess with. The phrase that is always used by people in this case, which is a handy one to keep in mind: There’s more to the story than the category.”

The change in intensity was caused by a thin layer of wind shear that was a bit stronger than expected. That allowed drier air into the storm, weakening it a bit, McNoldy explained.

“It’s still a very large storm and it’s still quite strong,” he said Thursday afternoon. “The peak winds are a bit less than they were, but they expanded, so that puts more of the coastline at risk from storm surge. That threat is still huge and the rainfall threat is still huge.”

Hurricane Florence, which first formed in the Atlantic two weeks ago, will weaken and become less organized as it approaches land, he said. The storm is expected to move inland out of the Carolinas around Monday.